Top 50 Cities for Singles Looking for Love

Facebook ranked 50 major cities with the best odds for turning a "Single" status to "In a relationship"

With Valentine's Day approaching, we asked Facebook for some help settling an old debate: Where is the best place in America for single people looking for love? Reed Albergotti has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty.

By

Reed Albergotti

Updated Feb. 14, 2014 12:25 p.m. ET

Colorado Springs, with its snow-capped Rocky Mountain backdrop, is home to the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Best and Worst Cities to Find Love

It is also the most romantic major U.S. city. According to data gathered by researchers at Facebook Inc., Colorado Springs residents couple up in committed relationships at a higher rate than in other major cities.

The city isn't a theme park for the hopelessly smitten, though. One explanation for its apparently high relationship rate: Strong military and religious communities help promote traditional values, social scientists and residents say.

Colorado Springs also is a college town and an outdoor sports hub attracting more men than women. It's a place where people keep fit, active and social, and the growing downtown bar scene probably doesn't hurt.

With Valentine's Day approaching, we asked Facebook for some help settling a perennial debate: Where is the best place in America to live if you are single and looking for love?

Many have tried using U.S. census data to rank cities based on each one's singles population. But Facebook, with 201 million users in the U.S. and Canada, has something the Census Bureau doesn't: Real-time relationship statuses for about half of Americans. Over a one-month period, Facebook ranked major U.S. cities according to the percentage of singles that went from "Single" to "In a relationship."

Finding a partner is an evermore complicated endeavor in the U.S. Researchers say more people are postponing serious relationships in favor of careers and considering more factors as they search for the ideal mate.

ENLARGE

San Jose, Calif., has the second-most single males per single female in the U.S.

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More choice isn't necessarily a good thing when it comes to relationships, says Justin Garcia, a professor in the department of gender studies at Indiana University and a researcher at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

"Sometimes when you're in a big city and there are thousands and thousands of people you might find attractive, it becomes so overwhelming that you don't engage in the dating culture at all," he says.

Overall, the Facebook data seems to back up Dr. Garcia's hypothesis: Big cities like San Francisco and New York had some of the lowest rates of coupling up. The data team also identified cities with high single male-to-female ratios and vice versa.

The most popular social network, it turns out, can also serve as the world's biggest survey. Facebook's 1.23 billion monthly active users world-wide constantly feed the company invaluable data.

An informal working group of stats whizzes and Ph.Ds on Facebook's data sciences team did the Valentine's Day analysis in October, using anonymous profile information gathered in the 50 U.S. cities with the most Facebook users. "This is a side project for us," says Mike Develin, the main researcher in the informal working group on relationships. "Forgive the pun, but it's our passion."

Facebook's data is by no means perfect. Some people don't bother updating the relationship status on their Facebook profile when they begin and end a relationship, for instance. And Facebook didn't break down the numbers by age or other demographics.

Overall, Facebook found that big, cosmopolitan cities with highly educated populations—places like New York City, Washington, D.C., and Miami—tend to have the highest percentages of single people. Those cities also tended to have the lowest couples rates.

A lot of cities with high relationship rates are in the South, Mr. Develin notes. Trailing Colorado Springs on the list are El Paso, Texas; Louisville, Ky., Fort Worth, Texas, and San Antonio.

ENLARGE

That was no surprise to Philip Cohen, sociology professor the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland. The Facebook data says more about the age, ethnic makeup and education levels in those cities than whether they are singles meccas, he says.

He advises people in search of a relationship to go where there are lots of other single people, not where there are high couples rates. "You only need to form one relationship, but you might want a lot of singles to choose from," he said, in an email.

David Siegel, a 24-year-old violinist, doesn't fit the stereotype some people may associate with Colorado Springs, where he grew up. He moved back from New York over a year ago. "I've found it a good place to be single," Mr. Siegel says, citing the thriving bars, restaurants and art galleries.

New York's dating scene was a "rat race," he says. People in Colorado Springs seem more interested in a lasting relationship. "Playing the game has a lot less do it with it," he says.

Alejandro Ganem, a 28-year-old El Paso resident, said he often feels pressure to couple up—especially in a city big enough to support a vibrant night life but small enough for word to travel fast. "When I start dating a girl, immediately she starts hearing about me," he says, including things about his ex-girlfriends. Sometimes a woman will pressure him to change his Facebook status to signal that he's off the market, he says.

Not all cities with a high relationship ranking are in the South. Portland, Ore., is a city so progressive that it spawned a TV show lampooning its culture, and it has a higher relationship rank than Houston; Richmond, Va., and Nashville, Tenn. Portland also had a high single male-to-female ratio, beating even Anchorage, Alaska. Some of those cities weren't big enough to make the Top 50 ranking.

Single ladies, take note: Cities near outdoor recreation tend to have a high proportions of single men. Among places with the highest, Facebook says, are outdoor hubs like Livingston, Mont.; Boise, Idaho; and Vancouver, Wash.—which all were too small to make the Top 50 ranking—and, again, Colorado Springs.

Life in those towns isn't easy for single men. "It's horrible," says David Fischer, a 48-year-old Honeywell International Inc. project manager in Colorado Springs. He turned to eHarmony to find his future fiancée, Kara Galvin, who lives in Denver, about an hour's drive north. They plan to get married this summer.

Although researchers hypothesize that religious cities would rank higher in relationship rates, the Facebook analysis found exceptions. Charlotte, N.C., and Nashville are among the nation's most religious cities, according to the American Bible Association, but they both ranked low on Facebook's list of relationship cities.

El Paso and San Antonio may owe their spots in the top five relationship cities to their Mexican heritage, says Andrew Cherlin a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University. "Hispanics tend to marry early," he said.

Eric Diaz, a 35-year-old dairy buyer at Whole Foods Market who grew up in San Antonio, says most of his friends met their spouses while in high school or college and got hitched in their 20s. He married Genefe Diaz, who moved to San Antonio after she graduated from college. When she arrived, many young professionals in town were already coupled up, she says. "San Antonio is just a really big small town," Ms. Diaz says. To find suitable men, "you really had to dig."

Corrections & Amplifications An earlier version of this article incorrectly paraphrased University of Maryland professor Philip Cohen's analysis of Facebook data indicating U.S. cities that might be hubs for singles and relationship forming. He didn't say the data says more about the prevalence of traditional dating culture in the South. He said it probably says more about the age, ethnic makeup and education levels in those cities.

On the chart, they show the ranking of the city's ratio of single females to single males. San Francisco rates pretty low, suggesting there are more single males than females, but maybe they need to break it down into heterosexual singles. The stat has little meaning if a large percent of the single males have no interest in the women.

This data was gleaned from Facebook. Judging from what some FB-obsessed women have told me, you really don't want to set your status as Single, even if you are. Unless you really like slimy come-ons, that is.

Wow, that was a waste of my time. It amazes me what kinds of articles that are pure garbage/People Magazine type pop up on WSJ...So, Colorado Springs is the best place to find a lasting relationship. Have you ever been to Colorado Springs? I have as well as having a friend who lives there and only because her hometown husband will not live anywhere else. She'd beat a fast track asap if she wasn't married and I have no desire to ever go back.

San Francisco at the opposite end of the spectrum...Spare me. If you are smart and good looking you have your choice anywhere you are and I'd rather be in San Francisco any day vs Colorado Springs if it was a choice between the 2.

Then again, to each his own. Let's face it, Eric Schmidt @ Google and Paul Allen @ Microsoft wouldn't have the playground full of willing and able women at their beck and call if the bank accounts were not overflowing with the 100's of millions/billions of $$ that they each have. There's always someone looking to improve their status/be exposed to things they would not be able to otherwise and get these things no matter what they have to do or are subjected to..

Perhaps Colorado Springs' success in forming couples and relationships may be indirectly related to the presence of the international headquarters of Dr. Dobson's 'Focus On The Family' in the city and the very large active and practicing Christian population that takes seriously the formation and preservation of love relationships.

Data-aided modern "dating" has as it's main component the ability to (at least somewhat) financially "qualify" prospective partners.This of course matters most to straight women.If there are cities where people have a tendency not to "couple up"...one could assume that far more "practical" considerations are behind that. Afterall...as just about every female-sung R&B song in the last 20 years has paraphrased in it's chorus: "I can be poor alllll by myself.What do I need you for?" Many women have seen & learned from the mistake(s) of their mothers.Even if it's only gonna be a "fling" ...you gotta "qualify".

Tie the city to liberal or conservative leaning when looking at the results. Pretty obvious that liberals not only don't like conservatives, they don't even like other liberals, yet they think they should tell you who to like.

Help me here. The title suggests the article is about the 50 best cities to find a relationship, then the article and the list include only the worst (unless you consider the least of the worst to be the best.)There's a disconnect somewhere.

I suppose this is part of the makeover of WSJ to be able to merge it with USA today. It has gotten almost to the level of the "newspapers" with all the juicy stories in large print on the cover.

Love is where you find it. For me, it was in a small office with lead lined walls, 2 locks on the door and an armed guard at an Air Force HQ. That was almost 46 years ago and we are still going strong.

I have known guys who could find a date on a deserted island and others who could not get a date at an all girls college.

There are just as many gays in San Francisco as any other city. The difference is San Francisco Is more tolerant and therefore there are more openly gay people than any other city. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man voted into public office. Since then there have been many others. In Alabama gay marriage is illegal and you can lose your job for being gay. Nobody admits to being gay in Alabama, that doesn't mean there aren't any gay people working in Alabama.

If you run a simple correlation between this single measure from FB, you will find it has a negative correlation (-.51) with the "relationship" measures--which supports your point--women who live in cities where they are more likely to get into a relationship are less likely to list themselves as single on FB.

Sandi, the only issue I have is with people who set strict rules for others and none for themselves and then have the bad taste to proclaim said stupidity in public. Likewise, I, too, am tired of this conversation and need to get back to my work. Have a nice life.

Oh, Sandi, Sandi, my dear girl, how can you think that Schmidt has any right to privacy in his disordered personal life when he has openly told the rest of us, courtesy of CNBC, that if we don't want anyone knowing about our own private lives we need to behave properly? To reiterate, there is nothing at all "open" about his private life. He's just a garden-variety hypocrite. If he doesn't want comments about his private life, then he needs to keep his nose away from others' lives. That's the problem in a nutshell.

You may call it "open marriage", Sandi, but I call it "mutually-acceptable adultery". There's nothing "open" about this arrangement, as your Gawker link suggests; Schmidt sends his attack lawyers after exes who talk too much. Mrs. Schmidt and his "dates" can have him, with bells on. Frankly, even with all the money he has, these women can do better; wealth only softens someone's vulgarity and only for the shortest time.

Why so bitter? Seriously, Why so emotional about a situation that you have no part in? . You're the one who seems to have a problem and maybe with a few more back & forths it will become clear to all what your true motives/rationale are.

This entire article and thread is a complete waste of time other than to kill a few minutes in between other more relevant/interesting things.

THOUGH, I can almost guarantee you that I am by far not the first person to ever have said the following to you and what may be a root cause of many things..."JUST LET IT GO"

You're the one who felt the need to point out Mr. Schmidt was married, I just expanded on that one. Nothing more. You seem bitter. Were you kicked to the curb in exchange for something younger/deemed more attractive and fit by your husband or possibly or passed over for someone/persons you judged yourself to be superior to?

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